George Maurer has been promoted to the position of senior vice president, manufacturing and pharmaceutical technologies at Adolor as part of the biotechs new managerial appointments.
Maurer has worked at Adolor since 2002, taking on roles of increasing responsibility after initially being appointed as senior director of commercial manufacturing. Prior to joining Adolor, Maurer worked in the manufacturing divisions at Viropharma and Schering-Plough.
Adolor has also appointed Elizabeth Jobes to the post of vice president, chief compliance officer. Jobes joins Adolor from Cephalon where she worked as senior director, global compliance officer.
EntreMed has responded to the challenging situation it finds itself in by overhauling its upper management, with CEO James Burns and chief financial officer Dane Saglio both leaving the company.
They will be followed out of the door by senior vice president, R&D Kenneth Bair and senior vice president, corporate & business development Thomas Bliss.
EntreMed’s cash reserves almost halved over the first nine months of 2008 in comparison with the previous year and the company has now decided to restructure, laying-off 60 per cent of its workforce and focusing resources on one product candidate.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals has appointed Rajiv De Silva to the post of chief operating officer of specialty pharmaceuticals. In this capacity De Silva will oversea Valeant’s specialty pharmaceutical operations in the US, Canada and Australia.
Prior to joining Valeant De Silva held a number of positions at Novartis, culminating in the post president, Novartis Vaccines USA and head, vaccines of the Americas.
The Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association (CGPA) has elected Pierre Fréchette as its new Chair. Fréchette is also the president and CEO of Sandoz Canada.